Some amount of security risk is inherent when transferring digital data between different computers and/or computer networks. Computer networks that interact with other networks are constantly exposed to malware, or malicious software, such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, which are built to infiltrate every level of the computer software architecture. Although many different virus scanning software products are currently available in the market, these products often fail to protect computer networks from the most harmful viruses. Virus detection software is reactive by nature. In many cases, virus scanners cannot detect a virus until it has been created, deployed on a computer network, identified as a virus after causing some harm to the computer network, and identifying characteristics of the virus (i.e., a virus definition) are cataloged and incorporated into the latest version of a virus detection software program. Therefore, new computer viruses and malware may simply be undetectable by any antivirus software. Additionally, even known viruses may elude detection, for example, by “hiding” in an unscanned partition or other location to avoid detection. Further, certain viruses or malware may attack the recipient at the level of the device driver, or operating system, or may attack the antivirus software itself, thereby allowing the virus to infect the computer and propagate itself before the virus scanning process is invoked.
One technique for reducing the risk of virus propagation between computer networks involves separating the computer networks with an “air gap,” this is, physically separating the computer networks so that no direct digital communication link exists. When an air gap separates two computer networks, any data transfer between the computer networks requires a manual step in which a user transfers files from the first computer network onto a portable storage media (e.g., a USB thumb drive, a read/writable CD or DVD, etc.). The portable storage media is then physical disconnected/removed from the first computer network, and physically connected to the second computer network to upload the transferred files. Thus, no direct communication link exists at any time between the computer networks, and all of the transferred data will reside on the portable media for a period of time during the transfer. During this period of time, the data residing on the portable media may be virus scanned to assure that the transferred files are not corrupt and will not transmit a virus between the networks. An existing technique involves virus scanning the data during the transfer using a standalone commercial personal computer (PC) having commercial virus scanning software installed, wherein the standalone computer is not connected to either of the computer networks, thus assuring that any virus within the data can only corrupt the standalone computer and will not spread to any larger network.
However, there are several drawbacks to existing systems that use standalone commercial PCs to transfer data between computer networks. First, because these standalone PCs are intentionally un-networked, they must be manually operated by a human data transfer officer (DTO). Thus, any update to antivirus software or virus definition files must be performed manually. Similarly, any outputs (e.g., detection of a virus, status reporting, statistical analysis, etc.) cannot be transmitted outside of the standalone computer. Thus, the results of the virus scans, and any other output from the standalone PC must be manually reviewed and/or printed out before they can be communicated to a centralized system for analysis. In large scale computer networks having many different standalone virus scanning PCs at different remote locations, this limitation makes the rapid review and analysis of virus detection across the network extremely cumbersome.